The Dream of the Celt: A Novel (24 page)

Was he near Manaus? Tabatinga? Putumayo? Iquitos? Was he sailing up or down the river? It made no difference. The important thing was that he felt better than he had for a long time, and as the boat moved slowly on the green surface, the drone of the motor cradling his thoughts, Roger reviewed once again what his future would be like now that he finally had renounced diplomacy and recovered total freedom. He would give up his London flat on Ebury Street and go to Ireland. He would divide his time between Dublin and Ulster. He would not devote his entire life to politics. He would reserve one hour a day, one day a week, one week a month for study. He would resume learning Irish and one day would surprise Alice by speaking to her in fluent Gaelic. And the hours, days, weeks devoted to politics would concentrate on great politics that had to do with the primary, central plan—the independence of Ireland and the struggle against colonialism—and he would refuse to waste his time on the intrigues, rivalries, competitiveness of hack politicians eager to win small areas of power, in the party, the cell, the brigade, even though to do so, they would have to forget and even sabotage the essential task. He would travel a great deal in Ireland, long excursions through the glens of Antrim and Donegal, through Ulster, Galway, and remote, isolated places such as the district of Connemara and Tory Island, where the fishermen knew no English and spoke only Gaelic, and he would get along with the peasants, artisans, fishermen who, with their stoicism, hard work, and patience, had resisted the crushing presence of the colonizer, preserving their language, their customs, their beliefs. He would listen to them, learn from them, write essays and poems about the silent, heroic, centuries-long saga of those humble people thanks to whom Ireland had not disappeared and was still a nation.

A metallic noise pulled him out of that pleasant dream. He opened his eyes. The jailer had come in and handed him a large bowl with the semolina soup and piece of bread that was every night’s supper. He was about to ask the time but refrained because he knew the man wouldn’t answer. He broke the bread into small pieces, put them in the soup, and ate it in widely spaced spoonsful. Another day had passed and perhaps tomorrow would be the decisive one.

X

The night before he sailed on the
Liberal
for Putumayo, Roger Casement decided to speak frankly to Stirs. During the thirteen days he spent in Iquitos he’d had many conversations with the British consul but hadn’t dared bring up the subject with him. He knew his mission had earned him a good number of enemies, not only in Iquitos but in the entire Amazonian region; it was absurd to also estrange a colleague who could be of great use to him in the days and weeks to come if he found himself in serious difficulty with the rubber barons. Better not to mention this indelicate matter to him.

And yet that night, as he and the consul were drinking their usual glass of port in Stirs’s small living room, listening to the clatter of rain on the tin roof and the spouts of water beating on the windows and the terrace railing, Roger abandoned his prudence.

“What opinion do you have of Father Ricardo Urrutia, Stirs?”

“The superior of the Augustinians? I don’t know him very well. In general, my opinion is good. You’ve seen a great deal of him recently, haven’t you?”

Did the consul guess they were entering shaky ground? In his small bulging eyes there was an uneasy gleam. His bald head shone in the light of the oil lamp sputtering on the little table in the middle of the room.

“Well, Father Urrutia has been here barely a year and hasn’t left Iquitos,” said Roger. “So he doesn’t know a great deal about what occurs on the rubber plantations in Putumayo. On the other hand, he’s spoken to me about another human drama in the city.”

The consul savored a mouthful of port. He began to fan himself again and Roger thought his round face had reddened slightly. Outside, the storm roared with long, muffled claps of thunder, and at times a flash of lightning lit the darkness of the forest for an instant.

“The one about the little girls and boys stolen from the tribes,” Roger continued. “Brought here and sold to families for twenty or thirty
soles
.”

Stirs remained silent, observing him. He was fanning himself furiously now.

“According to Father Urrutia, almost all the servants in Iquitos were stolen and sold,” Roger added, looking fixedly into the consul’s eyes. “Is that the case?”

Stirs heaved a prolonged sigh and moved in his rocking chair, not hiding an expression of annoyance. His face seemed to say:
You don’t know how happy I am that you’re leaving tomorrow for Putumayo. I really hope we don’t see each other again, Mr. Casement.

“Didn’t those things occur in the Congo?” he replied evasively.

“Yes, they did occur, though not in the general way they do here. Forgive my impertinence. The four servants you have, did you hire them or buy them?”

“I inherited them,” the British consul said drily. “They came with the house when my predecessor, Consul Cazes, left for England. You can’t say I hired them because that’s not the custom here in Iquitos. The four of them are illiterate and wouldn’t know how to read or sign a contract. They sleep and eat in my house, I clothe them and tip them as well, something that isn’t frequent in this territory, I assure you. They are free to leave whenever they like. Speak to them and ask them if they’d like to find work elsewhere. You’ll see their reaction, Mr. Casement.”

Roger nodded and sipped at his glass of port.

“I didn’t mean to offend you,” he apologized. “I’m trying to understand the country I’m in, the values and customs of Iquitos. I have no desire for you to look on me as an inquisitor.”

Now the consul’s expression was hostile. He moved the fan slowly and in his gaze was apprehension as well as hatred.

“Not as an inquisitor but as righteous,” he corrected him, making another grimace of dislike. “Or, if you prefer, a hero. I’ve already told you, I don’t like heroes. Don’t take my frankness in the wrong way. As for the rest, don’t have any hopes. You’re not going to change what happens here, Mr. Casement. And Father Urrutia won’t either. In a certain sense, for these children, what happens to them is a stroke of luck. Being servants, I mean. It would be a thousand times worse if they grew up in the tribes, eating their own lice, dying of fevers or some other epidemic before they’re ten, or working like animals on the rubber plantations. They live better here. I know my pragmatism will displease you.”

Roger said nothing. He knew now what he wanted to know. And also that from now on the British consul in Iquitos would probably be another enemy he ought to watch out for.

“I’ve come here to serve my country on a consular assignment,” Stirs added, looking at the fiber mat on the floor. “I carry it out with precision, I assure you. I know the British citizens, who don’t number many, and I defend and serve them in every way necessary. I do all I can to encourage trade between Amazonia and the British Empire. I keep my government informed regarding commercial activity, ships that come and go, any border incidents. Combating slavery or the abuses committed by the mestizos and whites of Peru against the Amazonian Indians is not one of my obligations.”

“I’m sorry to have offended you, Stirs. Let’s not speak of the matter again.”

Roger stood, said good night to the master of the house, and retired to his room. The storm had subsided but it was still raining. The terrace next to the bedroom was soaked. There was a dense odor of plants and wet earth. The night was dark and the sound of insects intense, as if they were not only in the forest but inside the room. With the rain another downpour had fallen: the black beetles called
vinchucas
. Tomorrow their corpses would carpet the terrace, and if you stepped on them, they would crack like nuts and stain the floor with dark blood. He undressed, put on his pajamas, and got into bed under the mosquito net.

He had been imprudent, of course. Offending the consul, a poor man, perhaps a good man, who was merely waiting to reach his retirement without becoming involved in problems, return to England, and bury himself in tending the garden of the cottage in Surrey he probably had been paying for gradually with his savings. That’s what he should have done, and then he would have fewer ailments in his body and less anguish in his soul.

He recalled his violent argument on the
Huayna
, the ship on which he traveled from Tabatinga, the border between Peru and Brazil, to Iquitos, with the rubber planter Victor Israel, a Maltese Jew, who had lived in Amazonia for many years and with whom he’d had long and very diverting conversations on the terrace of the boat. Victor Israel dressed in an eccentric manner, always seemed to be in disguise, spoke impeccable English, and while they played poker recounted with great charm his adventurous life, which seemed to have come from a picaresque novel, drinking glasses of cognac that the planter loved. He had the awful habit of shooting with a huge old-fashioned pistol at the pink herons that flew over the boat, but, happily, rarely hit one. Until, one fine day, Roger did not remember why, Victor Israel defended Julio C. Arana. The man was taking Amazonia out of savagery and integrating it into the modern world. He defended the
correrías
, thanks to which, he said, there were still laborers to harvest the rubber. Because the great problem in the jungle was a lack of workers to collect the precious substance the Maker had wanted to present as a gift to the region and a blessing to the Peruvians. This “manna from heaven” was being squandered because of the laziness and stupidity of the savages who refused to work as harvesters of latex and obliged the planters to go to the tribes and take them by force. Which meant a great loss of time and money for the enterprises.

“Well, that’s one way of looking at things,” Roger interrupted tersely. “There’s also another way.”

Victor Israel was a long, very thin man with white streaks in his mane of straight hair that reached to his shoulders. He had several days’ growth of beard on his large bony face and dark, triangular, somewhat Mephistophelian eyes that fixed on Roger disconcertedly. He wore a red vest and, over that, suspenders as well as a brightly colored scarf.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m referring to the point of view of the people you call savages,” Roger explained in a lighthearted tone, as if he were talking about the weather or the mosquitoes. “Put yourself in their place for a moment. There they are, in their villages, where they’ve lived for years, or centuries. One day some white or mestizo gentlemen come with rifles and revolvers and demand that they abandon their families, their plantings, their houses, to go and harvest rubber dozens or hundreds of miles away, for the benefit of strangers whose only reason is the force at their disposal. Would you go willingly to harvest your famous latex, Don Victor?”

“I’m not a savage who lives naked, worships the
yacumama
, and drowns his children if they’re born with a harelip,” replied the planter with a sardonic guffaw that accentuated his irritation. “Do you put the cannibals of Amazonia on the same plane as the pioneers, entrepreneurs, and merchants who work in heroic conditions and risk our lives to transform these forests into a civilized land?”

“Perhaps you and I have different concepts of what civilization is, my friend,” said Roger, always in that comradely tone that seemed to irritate Victor Israel beyond measure.

At the same poker table were Walter Folk and Henry Fielgald, while the other members of the commission had gone to lie in their hammocks and rest. It was a calm, warm night, and a full moon illuminated the water of the Amazon with silvery brilliance.

“I’d like to know what your idea of civilization is,” said Victor Israel. His eyes and voice were throwing off sparks. His irritation was so great that Roger wondered if the planter would not suddenly pull out the archaeological revolver he carried in his holster and shoot him.

“It could be summed up by saying that it’s an idea of a society where private property and individual liberty are respected,” he explained very calmly, all his senses alert in case Victor Israel meant to attack him. “For example, British laws prohibit colonists from occupying indigenous lands in the colonies. And they also prohibit, under pain of imprisonment, employing force against natives who refuse to work in the mines or camps. You don’t believe that’s civilization, do you? Or am I wrong?”

Victor Israel’s thin chest rose and fell, agitating the strange blouse with loose sleeves he wore buttoned to the neck, and the red vest. He had both thumbs caught in his suspenders and his narrow, triangular eyes were as red as if they were bleeding. His open mouth displayed a row of uneven teeth stained with nicotine.

“According to that criterion,” he stated, mocking and offensive, “Peruvians would have to allow Amazonia to remain in the Stone Age for the rest of eternity, in order not to offend the pagans or occupy lands they don’t know what to do with because they’re lazy and don’t want to work. Waste a resource that could raise the standard of living for Peruvians and make Peru a modern country. Is that what the British Crown proposes for this country, Señor Casement?”

“Amazonia is a great emporium of resources, no doubt,” Roger agreed, without becoming agitated. “Nothing more just than that Peru should take advantage of it. But not by abusing the natives, or hunting them down like animals, or forcing them to work as slaves. Rather, by incorporating them into civilization by means of schools, hospitals, and churches.”

Victor Israel burst into laughter, shaking like a puppet on springs.

“What a world you live in, Consul!” he exclaimed, raising his hands with their long, skeletal fingers in a theatrical way. “It’s obvious you’ve never seen a cannibal in your life. Do you know how many Christians have been eaten here by the natives? How many whites and
cholos
they’ve killed with their spears and poisoned darts? How many have had their heads shrunk, the way the Shapras do? Let’s talk when you have a little more experience of barbarism.”